Mine control tower

The Mine Control Tower is the building that defines and manages a mine’s operating zone. It controls which Mining Designations belong to the mine and which vehicles are assigned to work there. When first built, it automatically creates a default control area immediately in front of the tower in the direction it is facing, but this area can be reshaped at any time through the tower’s UI.

The control area is edited by opening the tower panel, selecting Edit Area, and then left-click-dragging a new region. Although the area may look trapezoidal depending on camera angle and terrain slope, it is always a rectangular region aligned to the map grid. It is not required to sit in front of the tower, and there is no maximum distance from the tower itself. The maximum size is 49 designations, or 196 tiles, on either side.

Vehicle assignment is also handled through the tower UI. Clicking the Mine Control Tower and then using the plus symbol next to a vehicle type assigns available vehicles to that mine. The number shown after the slash, such as / 5, indicates how many vehicles of that type are still unassigned to another Mine Control Tower, Fuel Station, or, after later research, a building that has exclusive vehicle assignment enabled. Vehicles cannot be assigned to multiple towers at once.

A functioning mine requires at least one excavator and one truck, and adding more vehicles increases mine output. Trucks that are not assigned to the tower will never attempt to haul ore for its excavators, so assigning the correct truck pool is essential for keeping production moving.

The tower also governs how mining groups behave when they cannot continue working. Trucks return to the tower and idle if they cannot unload cargo because there is no suitable non-full unloading facility, no non-full machine with truck importing enabled, and no valid Dumping Designation. Excavators return to the tower when no further reachable Mining Designations remain inside the control area, and their trucks accompany them.

The Mine Control Tower does not directly provide a way to prioritize one material over another. If a mine contains multiple materials, that preference must be set in the UI of individual excavators instead.